Pecans Roasting on An Oven Rack… My Attempt At Chocolate Turtles with a Twist: Cayenne Pepper

No chestnuts roasting here just yet. Spiced pecans, yes. I am trying a twist with my home-made chocolate turtles this year by using spiced pecans instead simply using raw ones. The spiced pecans have a tiny kick because of the addition of Cayenne pepper. I suppose I could name these “Snapping Turtles” 🙂 I am unsure if the crunch of the spiced pecan is too much. I’ll find out. Chocolate turtles are time consuming to make, but I love caramel so I consider it worthwhile. I make the spiced pecans (See how in my Spiced pecan recipe blog post). Then use those as the base for the turtles.

As the pecans are cooling, I start warming the caramel. There’s a candy maker’s shop up the street where I get baking chocolate & their fresh hand-made caramel. I haven’t yet learned how to make caramel… one of these days.

After putting dollops of warm caramel on their four-pecan-bed, I scrub out the double boiler of all caramel gooey goodness. Then chip away the block of chocolate and melt that in the boiler. Once it’s melted, the fun begins by repeating the same dollop motion again. Once the first layer of chocolate has cooled, then I have fun making squiggles all over it all.

I ate a lot of the spiced pecans while making these. Of course I sampled one. The spiced pecans are a bit crunchy, which isn’t bad, but I will have to forewarn people before eating to beware of it.